Teaching

I teach the Year 4 “Relativistic Astrophysics” module at the University of Birmingham. The module explores astrophysical systems in which matter moves close to the speed of light or the curvature of spacetime plays a significant role. The topics covered are listed below, along with handwritten lecture notes for each.

• Formation of compact objects (notes): White dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes, condition for dynamical stability, degeneracy pressures, polytropic models, mass limits for white dwarfs and neutron stars.
• Emission from supernovae (notes): Energetics of stellar explosions, radiative diffusion, lightcurve, the importance of radioactive heating.
• Radio pulsars (notes): Magnetic braking, pulsar ages, braking index, glitches.
• General-relativistic effects (notes): Gravitational redshift, trajectory of particles, stability of orbits, the Hawking effect.
• Accretion onto compact objects (notes): Accretion luminosity, the Eddington limit, emitted spectrum from an accretion disc, disc structure, the origin of viscosity.
• Tidal disruption events (notes): Tidal radius, Hills' mass limit, process of disruption, debris fallback rate, accretion luminosity.
• Gravitational waves (notes): Existence, propagation and polarisation states, effect on free particles, production of gravitational waves, emission from a binary compact object, resulting orbital evolution, detection methods.